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Good News?!? Knocking on Doors in Arizona and Other Things I Need to Say (Sen Swing State Canvass) [1]
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Date: 2022-08-10
So I’ve been getting a little nervous about all the comments talking about the enthusiasm and positivity of these canvassing diaries. I’m looking at the data that get produced and I see all the ups and downs of organizing volunteers to knock on voter’s doors, so it doesn’t feel all positive to me. The hope — the ideal — is always that organizing volunteers should look like a hockey stick (or exponential growth), except that we have been focused on early organizing, deep organizing, with the hope and expectation that when the Democratic Senate campaigns start canvassing in the fall they will have volunteers knocking on doors at heightened levels. The analogous difference between launching a rocket to Mars from the earth to launching from earth orbit. It’s still a launch to the moon — it’s still 90 days to the election — just one has a more efficient start or boost.
Volunteers canvassing each week in Senate Swing States
But here’s the thing, here’s what I hope readers take away: we aren’t doing anything new (machine Democrats have long done voter contact “year round;” the Madigan Machine expected its precinct captains to knock on doors four times a year during an election year) and it isn’t anything conservatives haven’t been doing for years. At least a decade. The Koch-led AFP has been organizing canvasses in swing states for more than a decade. Club for Growth about a decade. The Koch-funded Libre Initiative been canvassing among and offering services to Hispanics in swing states for at least two presidential cycles. We are behind here. Since November, 2020, when this project was brought to me (with the con that “you thought of this first” — flattering may have worked but it wasn’t convincing), we have tried to identify weaknesses in our (Democrat’s) campaign organizational approach and tried to mitigate those weaknesses — it feels like we are behind in all the things we need to do.
Just to complete the thought, Hope Springs from Field PAC identified three critical elements that we thought needed to be addressed to strengthen Democratic chances and electoral success: 1.) Field organizing in Special Elections; 2.) Early organizing, Deep Organizing and essential ground work in Senate Swing States; and 3.) Earlier organizing in GOTV and Election Protection, especially in light of the fact that Early Voting and the prospect of curing Ballots can be decisive in electoral outcomes now. Obviously, the most important of these has been early organizing in Senate Swing States and especially the Election Protection aspect here in response to Republican efforts to suppress the minority (and poor) vote after 2020.
*I* feel the fierce urgency of now. I feel behind in the task at hand. So when I read these comments and DMs about the positivity of my diaries, I ask myself, where is this coming from? Now I’m not wading deeply in Twitter, or DKos, or even FB or Insta. I wish I had the time to attend Netroots Nation (which I still think of as YearlyKos). I am deep in the mud here cutting turf, soothing volunteer organizers (trying to keep them in the game), helping our organizers get campaign jobs. I am trying to keep things transparent and fretting about all the things we haven’t done yet. I try to talk (phone) to 10 voters (which means making about 73 calls) and call 10 volunteers (which means making around 20+ calls) each week. Almost every week, I have one volunteer pick me up at the airport and another return me to an airport; every time they have engaged me, sometimes quizzed me, about what we are doing. So when I say that I don’t detect any lack of enthusiasm on the part of Democrats and Progressives, this is why. And I write all this not because I need affirmation — believe me, I am not short of self-esteem — but to remind you that there’s still a lot of work to do in this election cycle.
Finally, before I get to what everyone really wants to read, I also feel better about Democratic prospects in the Midterms, especially in the Senate, now. I suspect that (as of right now) Democrats will win 53 seats in the Senate — making Manchin and Sinema less of an obstacle in the next Senate. And while I still think we lose the majority in the House, I think it will be a lot closer than Republicans understand. At this point, I expect the Democratic and Republican majority to flip, but just flip. Meaning that vacancies and illnesses will make a huge difference in the day-to-day maneuvering in the House (and if you need a case for Nancy Pelosi sticking around, at least for the next year, that would be it). I wouldn’t be at all surprised, if I am right about the House being 220-215 GOP majority, and that Kevin McCarthy will not be the next Speaker of the House. But I am guessing there. Still, that’s in print.
My point is that we all need to get in the game here. We need to up our game. This isn’t good news, this is work that needs to be done. This is “cut the sh*t out” and get your heads into the game here. Knock on doors, make phone calls, text voters, write postcards, volunteer, donate what you can and don’t wait for the campaigns “to get back with you.” Make mobilize.us your friend and daily chore. Bookmark mobilize.us now. Do something. If you live in a swingy area, demonstrate your support for the cause visually. Plant a sign, any sign, that says “I am a Democrat” or Progressive or just “I believe in America.” Every single effort I have been involved with that tried to turn red areas into blue voters started with visual demonstrations that Democrats weren’t alone there. I can’t even tell you how often I have heard Democrats in red areas say, “I thought I was the only Democrat (or liberal) on my block.” Signs may not vote, but they sure do reinforce the fact that “we are not alone.” We are legion. And we can win in November. So I will step off my soapbox now…
Having really gone down the rabbit hole (I guess I needed to get that off my chest), I really had expected last week to have been our last canvass in Arizona. The primaries are completed and we’ve had Heat Warnings throughout the summer. We decided that when both Phoenix and Tucson (even though we are actually knocking in suburban areas) expect 100 degree temperatures before noon, OR when we run out of lit, that’s it for the summer. But that hasn’t happened yet, and 108 volunteers came out to knock on doors with Hope Springs from Field PAC in the western suburbs of Tucson on Saturday.
Like prior weeks, we had to modify our canvassing routine, which means we started earlier, knocked far fewer doors than we otherwise would have and used drivers to protect our volunteer canvassers. We want a driver/supervisor to have eyes on each volunteer every 20-30 minutes or so. And when volunteers get too hot, they jump into the vehicle and join the watch on the other members of the team. We also know to cut turf in smaller segments than we would in the fall or spring. But a Heat Wave is a heat wave, which is why I am so appreciative for those who do come out, especially in that temperature.
But I do want to emphasize that there are repeated opportunities to cool off for volunteers knocking on doors, and to do some paperwork in an air-conditioned vehicle. With lots of cold water, baby wipes, cooling towels and an air-conditioned vehicle, our canvassers are safe, looked-after and don't look haggard when they knock on doors. We also suggest that people bring a change of shirts and I even have drivers that create "privacy environments" in their SUVs for changing into dryer clothes. Again, it really makes our volunteers feel valued. Volunteers are golden. Volunteers are everything.
We asked voters who open their doors if they were registered to vote at their current address. And we note that one of the benefits for those who are not currently registered at their current address is that the new Arizona voter registration form allows you to sign up for the Active Early Voting List to receive their early ballot by mail. This does encourage voters to update their voter registrations. It’s the little things — but it’s not valid for today’s election!
We canvass with an Issues Questionnaire that allows voters to tell us what is on their minds. We use it as a conversational check to guide volunteers through their dialog at the door. It makes it easy on our volunteers as provides us with vital data that will be entered in VAN (the Democratic database) after the primary. So far, 14,236 voters have answered questions from the Issues Survey. I can’t tell you how much our volunteers like this technique and how much *they* learn from knocking on doors.
They aren’t the only ones. We have knocked on 271,913 doors in Arizona this year, and found 8,102 houses that were empty when we knocked on them, 29,471 other voters who have moved (or died) and re-registered 1,751 voters who needed to update their voting address (as required by HAVA). Re-registering voters has given these volunteers real motivation to find and correct voter addresses at the doors who talk to them.
Which is why our very first priority in these Senate Swing State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that opened their doors is registered to vote at their current address.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First Round of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
We ask voters whether they have a primary issue concern. What we are looking for is to determine whether they are “single issue” voters. We use open-ended questions because we are really looking for quick, immediate responses. People know what issues they will be voting on, and if they can’t think of any, that doesn’t defeat the purpose. This week, what we have been calling Summer Worries was the top issue we heard from voters in the Tucson suburbs. Climate Change, Access to Water, the Heat, these are examples of the kinds of things voters were saying that we clumped together into “Summer Worries.” The Economy was the second most frequent response mentioned by voters we talked to on Saturday (and comments about a technical recession are growing). Concerns about Public Safety (Guns, Crime, School Shootings) was the third most mentioned issue. We still hear a lot additional comments about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence in the “single issue” or message to Congress query.
We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters, which means we haven’t seen responses from anyone who admits to being a Republican. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. By our work and our presence we are trying to convey that Democrats care and we listen. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.
Support (measured as job approval) for President Biden continued to be 55% from the voters we talked to on Saturday. Disapproval dipped to 10%. Support for Senator Kelly have also been rising; this week they were at 76%. So while Senator Kelly is still “polling” (remember, this isn’t anything like a real poll — we don’t knock on doors of GOP households) well above President Biden, there’s been a nice uptick for both Democrats among the voters we have talked to.
We registered 8 New Voters last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 226 voters.
We also ask voters who open their doors whether they want to fill out a Constituent Service Request form. This week, we collected 37 CSRs in Arizona. Constituent Service Requests are handed over to (hopefully Democratic) office holders with responsibilities for the area of the request. Q-slips will be sent directly to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Comments from Observation Forms are entered into VAN, as well.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them. There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year. And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
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